Fethering 02 (2001) - Death on the Downs (24 page)

The house was exactly what a successful property developer would have built for himself. Every feature was immaculately finished, but there were a few too many of them. Did the building need both a turret and a bell-tower? Did every upstairs window need a balcony? Wouldn’t the front garden have looked better paved with one kind of stone rather than four? And did the Tudor beams over the double garage match the panels of neat flint facing either side of the front door? Come to that, wouldn’t the heavy oak front door itself have looked sufficiently monastic without the semicircle of stained glass above it?

Carole anticipated much toing and froing with the Village Committee of Weldisham over the architectural details of Harry Grant’s barn conversion.

Jenny Grant was dressed rather like her house. She clearly frequented one of those boutiques which doesn’t like plain colours or plain surfaces. Her black skirt was decorated with random pieces of shiny leather and gold buttons; her fluffy pale blue jumper had quilted panels of scarlet silk and some gold braid at the neck. The house looked like a display unit for building effects; its owner a display unit for haberdashery. Her pallor accentuated the fussiness of her garments. Jenny Grant looked literally washed out, as though she had been put too many times through the laundry cycle.

She still expressed no curiosity at Carole’s arrival, but ushered her into a sitting room that looked like a display unit for upholstery. Tea things were already on a tray, with a plate of sugared biscuits.

“It’s very good of you to see me,” said Carole.

“No problem.”

After she had poured the tea, Jenny Grant sat back, her faded blue eyes blinking, waiting for whatever should come next. She didn’t volunteer anything. Maybe she never took any initiative, was eternally reactive. That was perhaps the way to survive as wife of someone as noisily energetic as Harry Grant.

“As I said on the phone, I want to talk about Pauline Helling. Terrible tragedy that was.”

“Terrible,” Jenny Grant agreed, as though commenting on a minor deterioration in the weather.

“Harry said you were actually related to her in some way…”

“Distantly. My maiden name was Helling and there are lots of branches of the family round the area. I think possibly our grandmothers were cousins, something like that.”

“So you didn’t know Pauline well?”

“I don’t think anyone knew her well, except possibly Brian. She kept herself very much to herself.”

“I heard that there was more to it than that.”

“How do you mean?”

“That the village actually ostracized her.” From Jenny Grant’s expression, she had never heard the word. “That she wasn’t made to feel very welcome in Weldisham.”

Jenny shrugged. “There are a lot of very snobbish people up there.”

“And you’re about to go and join them, I gather. I heard from Harry that you’d got your planning permission on the barn.”

If Carole had hoped to prompt Jenny’s views on whether she and her husband would be accepted socially in Weldisham, she was disappointed. All she got was a ‘Yes’.

“You must be delighted about that.”

“It’s what Harry wants.”

And Carole had a feeling that in that sentence lay the secret of the success of the Grants’
marriage
, “Anyway, as I gather,” she went on, “let me get this right…Pauline Helling wasn’t brought up the village…”

“No. She lived not far from here. The Downside Estate…Do you know it?”

“Yes. I live in Fethering.”

Downside was the poor end of town.

“And did Pauline marry a Helling?”

“No, she was born a Helling. She never married.”

“So you don’t know who Brian’s father was?”

A shake of the head. “No idea. I don’t know anyone who knew. It was a long time ago. Brian must be nearly forty now.”

“Do you know him?”

“I know who he is. I’ve never had a conversation with him.” Jenny Grant didn’t sound as though that was a situation she was in any hurry to change.

“And Pauline used to work as a cleaner in Weldisham. For Graham Forbes and his first wife.”

“That’s right.”

Still there was no curiosity as to how Carole had got this information or why it was of any relevance to her.

“His first wife was also a Helling, I believe?”

“Yes. Sheila.”

“Did you know her?”

“Oh yes. I went to the same school as she did. Many years afterwards, of course.”

Suddenly Carole realized what kind of school it had been that the two attended. An upmarket girl’s private school. Jenny Grant’s manner of speech was so lacking in animation that its vowels had been ironed out, but now she concentrated, Carole could detect the upper-class languor underneath. Harry Grant had married a few grades above himself. Maybe Jenny’s social status had made up for her lack of more obvious attractions.

So those who had borne the Helling name went through the strata of class, Sheila Forbes and Jenny Grant aiming at the top, Pauline Helling and Lennie Baylis’s mother down at the bottom, with no doubt many social nuances in between.

“Did you know Sheila Forbes well?”

“Quite well.”

“Were you surprised when you heard she’d gone off with another man?”

“It did seem odd, certainly.” But nothing seemed to have the power to surprise Jenny Grant for long. She shrugged. “Still, that’s what she did. Maybe a romantic heart beat beneath that forbidding exterior.”

“Was she forbidding?”

“Perhaps the wrong word. She was very correct, though. Always did the right thing. British, in the old-fashioned sense. You know, didn’t let her emotions show on the surface. I’m sure that’s why she and Graham went down so well abroad.”

“The archetypal British couple.”

“That’s it, yes.”

“And would you say their marriage was a happy one…You know, before the split?”

Jenny Grant’s hands lifted and flopped ineffectually back on to her lap. “Who can say? A marriage may look fine on the surface, but nobody except the two inside know what it’s really like.”

There was a slight change in her tone as she said this. Carole wondered if a comment was being made on the Grants’ own marriage. But Jenny didn’t seem about to expand on the hint and, intriguing though the subject might be, it wasn’t what Carole was there to find out about.

“Graham and Sheila Forbes were quite well heeled, I gather. Someone said he had private money.”

“‘Had’ being the operative word. I don’t think he’s got much now.”

“Oh?”

“Well, presumably he’s got a British Council pension. Not much else, though.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“Harry told me. I don’t know where he got it from, but he’s usually pretty reliable. There aren’t many secrets round here.”

“So where did Graham Forbes’s money go? Has he got a secret vice or something?”

“Don’t think so. But I would imagine he’s like the others.”

Carole looked quizzical.

“Most people round here who’ve lost a lot of money—I don’t mean from firms going to the wall, I mean investment income…Well, it doesn’t do to talk about it, but with most of them it was Lloyd’s.”

“Ah.”

The crash of many Lloyd’s syndicates had hit a lot of ‘names’, as the major investors were called. In a well-cushioned area like the part of West Sussex around Weldisham, there had probably been many casualties.

“Moving on, Jenny…do you remember when exactly Pauline Helling had her pools win?”

“Well, let me think…” Jenny’s brow wrinkled, and the effect was to make her look younger, suggesting that she might once have had more spark and vivacity. Maybe it wasn’t just her social position that had drawn Harry Grant to her. “She moved into Weldisham round…I don’t know…I should think about 1988…so presumably some time round then.”

“Did she put all the money into buying Heron Cottage?”

“I don’t know. I’ve no idea how much she actually won. 1 don’t think anyone knew. I’m sure Pauline would have put a cross in the box for ‘No Publicity’.”

“But you don’t know whether she celebrated by taking a trip abroad or anything like that?”

“I don’t think so. I didn’t know her that well. She could have done all kinds of things I never knew about.”

“Of course. So, as far as you know, she never did travel abroad?”

“No, I don’t think…She wasn’t the kind to…” Something came through the fogs of memory. “Oh, just a minute, though…Yes, she did. I remember being surprised when Harry told me. He’d bumped into Brian, who said his mother had suddenly got herself a passport and was going off on a jaunt somewhere. It seemed so out of character, that’s why I’ve remembered it.”

“You don’t remember where she went?”

Jenny Grant shook her head. “I don’t think I ever knew. I don’t even know if she actually did go. I just remember Harry mentioning about the passport.”

“And when did this happen…presumably after the pools win?”

“I suppose it must have been…except…” Again Jenny Grant screwed up her face with the effort of recollection. “No, because Harry was out working on a development in Spain for most of 1988 and ‘89, so it must’ve been before that. End of ‘87, I suppose.”

“Really?” said Carole, suppressing the excitement that spurted inside her.

They talked a little longer, but nothing else emerged that was relevant. Not that Carole minded. She’d already got more than she’d dared hope for.

Jenny Grant seemed as unsurprised when Carole said she must go as she had been by her arrival.

“Very good of you to see me, Jenny.”

“No problem. Lucky you called today, though.”

“Oh?”

“Harry and I are off to Portugal tomorrow. For a week. To celebrate the planning permission on the barn.” She made it sound like a death sentence.

Beneath the stained glass of the open front door, Carole shook her hostess’s hand, and it was then that she saw something in the woman’s eyes that maybe explained her unquestioning passivity.

Jenny Grant was on tranquillizers, Carole felt sure. A hefty dose of Librium or something similar was needed to maintain that placid equilibrium. Maybe that was the only way this rather quiet woman could survive being married to a social climber like Harry Grant.

S
he desperately wanted to talk to Jude, but Jude was up at Sandalls Manor and Carole couldn’t wait. The speed with which her ideas were moving and conjoining and producing new ideas meant she had to talk to someone. And, in a sense, there was only one right person to talk to.

Lennie Baylis answered his mobile straight away. He was up at Weldisham, doing some interviews with local people about the Heron Cottage fire. But when he heard that was what Carole wanted to talk about, he suggested she came up as soon as possible. He was once again ensconced in the Snug of the Hare and Hounds. If she was quick, they could talk before the pub opened at six.

Carole drove to the village as fast as she could, but was impeded by the local rush-hour traffic. That was probably just as well, because her excitement would have made her careless of speed limits.

She was no longer suspicious of Detective Sergeant Baylis and was therefore unperturbed by the readiness with which he’d agreed to see her. Now she reckoned she knew the full scenario, and it didn’t involve him. The detective was no longer a suspect, just a useful professional contact.

Carole parked in the Hare and Hounds car park and, when she arrived in the pub at twenty to six, Baylis was in the Snug, chatting to Will Maples. Their behaviour definitely looked more like ‘chatting’ than ‘interviewing’. The sergeant had a very large Grouse in front of him, and the manager was sipping a cup of coffee, in anticipation of a busy evening ahead.

Carole didn’t find out what they were chatting about, though. They stopped as soon as she came in. On a little flick from Lennie Baylis’s eyebrows, Will Maples rose from his seat.

“Better sort things out in the kitchen,” he said.

“Maybe our lady friend would like a drink…”

“No, thank you, Sergeant.”

“Right. And you’re OK for the moment, Lennie?”

The whisky glass was raised in acknowledgement. “Fine, thanks.”

Will Maples left the bar. Detective Sergeant Baylis looked at the eternally repeating flame pattern of the log-effect fire. “Not so wet as you were last time we met here, are you, Mrs Seddon?”

“No. No, I’m not.”

“But I gather it’s still something to do with the same subject you want to talk about. The bones.”

“Yes.”

“Well, fire away.”

Carole nodded, and then a caution struck her. “What I’m going to say may be tantamount to an accusation…” He looked alarmed. “Of someone we both know.” He relaxed. “I wouldn’t like to think that kind of thing would become public knowledge.”

“Mrs Seddon…” Detective Sergeant Baylis spread his hands disingenuously. “It is my job to listen to wild accusations…often a lot wilder than anything I’m sure you’re going to come up with…and it’s also my job to keep the source of such accusations secret. Goodness, if all the murder theories I’ve heard in Weldisham the last few weeks ever became public, nobody in the village would ever speak to anyone else again. I can’t think of a single person who hasn’t been accused by someone. It’s amazing how the discovery of an unidentified body brings out all kinds of old resentments that have been bubbling under the surface for years.”

“And it still is an unidentified body?”

He smiled cannily. “Very clever, Mrs Seddon. Worth putting the question in. You might just catch me off my guard, and I might just let slip some classified information to you…but don’t count on it.”

She coloured at what was unmistakably a reproof. “I’m sorry.”

A grin. “OK, let’s hear your theory…”

Carole took a deep breath, and as she embarked on her theory she became aware that, beneath his laid-back exterior, Detective Sergeant Baylis was tense. He still thought what she was about to say concerned him at a personal level. He was waiting to hear what she had unearthed about his family history.

“I think,” she began slowly, “that what’s happened recently has roots that go back a long way into the past…”

He nodded assent. Nothing controversial so far. But he remained taut, waiting to see what would follow.